k together to the Ledge
to-morrow, my little wife and I."

"Where's a card--your card, Charlie? It would be more proper-like, as
Mrs. Splinter would say, for you to write it."

"I will try," I said, taking out a card-case from my breast-pocket. As
I drew it forth my hand touched a package, Fanny Meyrick's packet.
Shall I give it to her now? I hesitated. No, we'll be married first in
the calm faith that each has in the other to-day, needing no outward
assurance or written word.

I penciled feebly, with a very shaky hand, my request that the doctor
would call at Hiram Splinter's, at his earliest convenience that
evening, to perform the ceremony of marriage between his young friend,
Bessie Stewart, and the subscriber. Hiram's eldest son, a youth of
eight, was swinging on the gate under our window. To him Bessie
entrusted the card, with many injunctions to give it into no other
hands than the doctor's own.

In less time than we had anticipated, as we looked out of the window
at the last pink glow of the sunset, the urchin reappeared, walking
with great strides beside a spare little-figure, whom we recognized as
the worthy doctor himself.

"Good gracious! he _is_ in a hurry!" said Bessie, retiring hastily
from the window; "and we have not said a word to Mrs. Splinter yet!"

We had expected the little doctor would wait below until the
bridal-party should descend; but no, he came directly up stairs, and
walked into the room without prelude. He took Bessie in his arms with
fatherly tenderness: "Ah, you runaway! so you've come back at last?"

"Yes, doctor, and don't you let go of her until you have married her
fast to me."

"Ahem!" said the doctor, clearing his throat, "that is just what I
came to advise you about. Hiram told me this afternoon of the chase
you two had had, and of your illness this morning. Now, as it is half
over the village by this time that Bessie Stewart has been rescued
from the Shaker village by a chivalrous young gentleman, and as
everybody is wild with impatience to know the _denoument_, I want you
to come down quietly to the church this evening and be married after
evening service."

"To please everybody?" I said, in no very pleasant humor.

"I think it will be wisest, best; and I am sure this discreetest of
women," still holding Bessie's hand, "will agree with me. You need not
sit through the service. Hiram can bring you down after it has begun;
and you may sit in the vestry till the clerk